yarnstorm

intermission

I like the word 'intermission'. It takes me back to Saturday matinees at The Savoy Cinema when it teemed with hundreds of local children, and any adult was unwise to set foot in the place. There was always an INTERMISSION (the word appeared in huge letters on the screen) during which everyone left their seats, ran around, chased each other, made masses of noise, queued up for ice-creams or tried to see behind the screen curtains. It was wonderful. And then we'd all spill out, blinking at the daylight even though it wasn't past midday, and queue up again for a bag of chips.

I'm in need of an intermission. It will be more civilised than the intermissions at the bug-hut (as my Mum would call it), but the principle is the same - I need to get out of my seat and do a few things.

I'll be back in a while.

what a difference a year makes

Early this morning I received a text from a friend saying, 'Happy Birthday. What a year'. It wasn't until I read it that I realised that she's right. It has been quite a year since the last 28 November, a day spent in an agony of apprehension and waiting for a decision from a publisher. It's hard to believe what's happened in this one year.

Books, quilts, tulips, cakes, knitting.

Galleries, films, holidays. London, Paris, New York.

New occupation for me. New job for Simon. New school for Phoebe. New height for Tom. New adventures for Alice.

But some things don't change. The people who know me well know that I'm still the same girl who loved sweets and cakes and bright colours. Just a little older.

haven

The last few evenings have been a haven of peace and quiet. I've been able to watch 'Frida' and marvel at the rich, vivid colours of Frida Kahlo's wedding outfit, the excellent BBC adaptation of Cranford and marvel at the drabness of the early nineteenth-century clothes, and I've been able to read Garden People by Ursula Buchan and marvel at the amazing acid colours and tones of Valerie Finnis' photographs.

And all the time I've been knitting my own Haven. It's from the new book by Kim Hargreaves and is knitted in the soft, thick Rowan Cocoon. I chose a pale, silvery grey, and with the Art Deco style pattern, my scarf has come out looking a little like the top section of the Chrysler Building in New York.

My next piece of knitting is a Kim H hat for Alice. If I can bear to disturb the lovely box and packaging.

I completely forgot to mention that I went to listen to Kaffe Fassett at the V&A last Friday evening. I guess that's because I sometimes have to carry something around with me for a while before I talk or write about it - especially if it's something which really makes me think. (Dorothy Rowe writes about this phenomenon brilliantly.) It was a great talk - the visuals were stunning and I wanted it all to slow down so that I could look at everything for as long as I needed - and it was massively inspiring and energising and confidence-boosting. I could do with something like this once or twice a year to help realign my perspective - and to jog me out of my comfy haven.

tea time

Before I sat down to write this post, I had to make myself a nice cup of tea.

So here I am, with my favourite Yorkshire Gold tea from Taylor's, thinking about tea. Not quite as serene and minimalist as Chardin's Lady Taking Tea (1735), but just as content to stir my tea and watch the wisps of steam curling out and above my cup. And noticing that fat brown tea pots haven't changed much in nearly 300 years.

 

Then again, taking tea is a timeless pleasure and one which punctuates every single day of my life. Even though tea is a constant, tea time and tea cups have been on my mind since several people asked where I found the lovely tea cup fabric. It's by Yuwa and I bought it from Purl Patchwork in New York (see here). I fell for it because I like the way the tea & coffee cup design captures the delicacy and elegance of the cup shapes - rather like a set of designs for Wedgwood bone china cups or Herend porcelain.

I bought it in two colourways. The pale latte one above suits a self-contained, elegant but homely, quiet French tea moment like the one in the Chardin painting. 

And the red would match this wonderfully indulgent, baroque tea and samovar and cakes and fruit and cat tea time occasion. This is 'The Merchant's Wife at Tea' (1918) by Boris Mihajlovic Kustodiev - a riot of colours, vistas and enjoyment.

 

After looking at this, I realised that the only thing missing from my tea moment was something to eat. So I made a trayful of Melting Moments with dark chocolate chips.

Tea and biscuits. Lovely.

                                 ***

Re my last post - the painting on the cover of Dombey and Son is 'A Portrait of Henry Thomas Lambert' (1858) by George Townsend Cole.

not red and green

It's not my plan make a red and green quilt. It has never been a red and green quilt in my mind since I first thought of it about twelve months ago when I knelt on the floor and looked and looked at a piece of Kaffe Fassett's Wisteria fabric from the Lille Collection (third from bottom in photo below) and saw the possibility of a quilt based on chartreuse and limey greens and cranberry and blood red. For me, there is a world of difference between this scheme and 'red and green'. It may be just a matter of words to some, but I find the matter of shades more important.

A little while ago I washed all the possible candidates to remove any size, as I prefer to cut and piece and stitch softer fabrics. But I put off ironing them until there was a good number of radio programmes to keep me at the ironing board, annd this week is a belting week for radio. There are the plummy, brisk and very English tones of Katharine Whitehorn who is reading from her autobiography. There was a fascinating piece about girls' education and my old school on Woman's Hour today.

And then there is the 20 part adaptation of Dombey and Son which would, in turn, require a huge amount of ironing. I think this is my favourite of all Dickens' novels and nowhere near as sombre and dour as some people think. I also love the cover of this edition, and when I looked at it again after listening to the very edited radio version (and why do they always have to do Dickens so 'dramatically' - why not just read it the way Dickens wrote it - he put in all the drama and comedy and tragedy you need), I noticed the red and green theme of the room. 

Only saying it's a 'red and green' interior is like saying Dombey and Son is a fine novel. There's so much more to red and green. And Dickens.

on track

Business jargon, with all its level playing fields and singing from same hymn sheets and things being moved forward, always makes me laugh. Even when I worked for multi-national companies I couldn't bring myself to use these cliches and stuck, instead, to plain language. No wonder I never broke down any barriers, climbed the corporate ladder or got close to the glass ceiling.

And why are things always 'on track'? Never fine, organised, sorted or just plain OK. 'On track' sounds so portentous, so very important. But I suppose that's why it's so frequently said about even the most trivial of concerns. However, this annoying little phrase actually felt quite apt today, even though it was probably more to do with the fact that I was travelling by train and tube and had railway metaphors running through my mind. I still could never say 'on track' out loud in a conversation or even in a frank and open exchange of opinions.

Thanks for your comments on the last post and the great suggestions for Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer (many of which were already either included or on my list) - they have made me feel really good about this book and it was with a spring in my step and echoes of 'on track' in my mind that I went to work in the British Library today to look at fabulous old illustrations and first editions and descriptions of rock buns and birthday cakes.

This morning was one of those days when it's great to travel by train, especially when there is a wreathy mist rising from the football pitch (not level, very uneven) on the opposite side of the tracks, and a brilliantly lit silver birch tree next to my platform. And trains whizzing past and glinting in the sunlight.

And how about this for modern art? It's where layers of posters have been stripped away on a platform at Oxford Circus tube station with amazing results. Like Jackson Pollock meets Rothko meets Ben Nicholson.

Finally, I emerged at St Pancras to see the clock tower of Sir George Gilbert's Scott's fantastic Midland Grand Hotel (1868-77). I can't tell you how happy I am that this is being restored at last and will open in 2009. As long as everything is 'on track', as I am sure the developers are busy telling themselves every day.

I'm already looking for a window of opportunity to visit this amazing building. Must prioritise and diarise asap.

cherry cake and ginger beer

Since 1st September I have been surrounded by Enid Blyton, L.M. Montgomery, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Noel Streatfeild, E. Nesbit, Joyce Lankester Brisley, Arthur Ransome, Michael Bond, and E.B. White. Johanna Spyri, Eve Garnett and Eleanor H. Porter and many more are neatly stacked while Jean Webster, Elizabeth Goudge, Susan Coolidge, P.L. Travers and Kenneth Grahame are scattered on the carpet. Classic English and American recipe books are within easy reach, and the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature is permanently open on my desk.

Every working day I escape into this world of children's literature so that I can write my new book, Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. I'm revisiting the books I read as a child (I was well-fed with both classics and contemporary fiction) and also making some happy new discoveries. And all the while I am thinking about what the characters are eating or wanting to eat or planning to eat. Because the book is a recipe book based on the treats and foods that are to be found in children's classics. So it's mostly twentieth-century titles and mostly British and American cooking (I'm not including fantasy food) and it's all very mouth-watering and delicious.

It's an idea Phoebe and I had several years ago when we were on holiday. Phoebe was reading yet another Enid Blyton book and I was reading a newspaper magazine supplement. I came across a picture of a pale, pastel pink macaroon, exclaimed how pretty it looked and showed it to Phoebe who was amazed because she's just been reading about macaroons in her book (macaroons are a favourite EB treat). A little later I said I'd make some scones with jam and cream and again she was very excited because the characters in her book had just eaten some. So then I started to question her about all the tasty treats that were appearing in the series she was reading, and I realised that although she'd read about many, she hadn't actually tasted all of them.

That same day, we drew up a long list and it occurred to us that it would make a good subject for a recipe book. From then on, Phoebe turned up the corner of any page of any book which contained a mention of food, I and I worked my way through the books after her. It wasn't long before I was looking up old editions in the British Library when I should have been researching Dickens for my PhD. But, after filling several notebooks with literary food references, I put them away because I had no idea how to go about writing or publishing a book.

Until Hodder & Stoughton accepted the proposal for The Gentle Art of Domesticity. And then I wrote another proposal which was accepted in the spring of this year. So here I am, writing a book with the working title of Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer (it may change). 

At the moment I'm doing the reading and writing, but in the New Year I'll be into the cooking and writing. It will be wonderful to spend days in a warm kitchen making and baking and testing and recreating the tastes of childhood. But for the time being, it's very lovely to be transported on a daily basis by some of the best children's stories ever written.

I do find, though, that this book colours everything we bake. Phoebe's birthday party birthday cake (as opposed to her birthday day birthday cake) made me think of the Trunchbull's huge chocolate cake which Bruce Bogtrotter is forced to eat as punishment in Matilda by Roald Dahl. Of course, the cake-eating is a moral victory for Bruce Bogtrotter, whereas Phoebe's cake (which she designed and made herself) was enjoyed in a more polite, shared manner. This is one example where she has read the book and eaten the cake.

 

settling down

Life is settling down again. October was an unsettled month; the publication of a book can do that to your life, I suppose. It was exciting, distracting and thought-provoking but I'm glad I can feel some familiar rhythms and patterns coming back. And, nothing daunted, I am getting on with writing the next book.

I'm picking up some threads, too. The crochet flowers are blooming at a modest rate, and I only have to tip all the squares out of my bag to brighten my day and mood. It works with the yarn, too, and I love to see all the bright colours strewn around on the carpet.

The Kim Hargreaves scarf is progressing and the simple lace pattern is very compatible with listening to the radio or watching black-and-white films - most recently Waterloo Road (1944) with Stewart Granger as a London bounder (complete with drama school-style Cockney accent). I had to drop my knitting a few times to concentrate on the amazing period scenes of a sooty, grimy, war-time Waterloo Station - quite a contrast to the gleaming St Pancras International which I visited this week - so beautifully renovated and restored, with a glass roof like an ice sculpture.

It's also good to be reading again. Ted Hughes' letters. Dickens' Hard Times. Dorothy Whipple's short stories. The two lovely Susan Cropper books on crochet and on knitting which sidetrack me into planning all kinds of projects (where, oh where, can I find wide lucite/plastic/polyester bag handles?).

And I know life is more settled because I'm watching the hyacinths grow on the kitchen windowsill.

sweet fantasy

I now have the most romantic notions of sugar on snow. Well, the name is enough to conjure up a fantasy of being in a warm kitchen on a cold, wintery night, boiling maple syrup and then writing messages with sticky, amber ink on a white sheet of snow. Alternatively, I wouldn't mind running outside with a pan and flinging the syrup from a wooden spoon in wild patterns and squiggles and swirls in a grand Jackson Pollock manner.

You see what you've started? All those wonderful stories, descriptions, memories and links are making me long for a sugar snow; thank you so much for the lovely escapism as well as the useful facts.

I would love to have a go at making the candy, but we get snow so rarely here that it's not something I can plan. But I'm going to keep some extra maple syrup in, just in case. Because you never know, this could be the winter of English sugar on snow and a whole new artistic medium.

Instead, we have frost and a cold wind. But we also have some lovely long, golden rays of sunshine in the afternoon which make fresh rock buns look quite sublime. I made these in a break from work as a subsitute for all the candy I've been reading about.

I'm still working on a poetic and romantic name for autumn rock buns...

a sweet request

I need to ask a favour. Does anyone know anything about molasses candy pulls (as in Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster) or maple syrup candy (sugar on snow etc as in Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder). If so, I'd be very grateful for your help.

Thanks.

PS Does anyone ever read Daddy-Long-Legs these days? I've just re-read it and I cried all over again even though I knew who DDL was.